Let's stop defining women by fertility and motherhood

By Elizabeth Lefebvre|Print |Share

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It’s been an interesting week for women in the church. First, there was the back and forth between prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life Brazilian Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz[1] and the Vatican[2] over who knew what about the crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Then yesterday Pope Francis gave a somewhat odd speech[3] while addressing women religious from 75 countries who were attending a gathering of International Union of Superiors General. He urged the women religious to be fertile spiritual mothers in the church, as opposed to being old maids or spinsters. The pope said that the nuns’ vow of chastity must be “fertile” and generate “spiritual children in the church.”

So, even being an unmarried, celibate women still means that the church will define you by fertility and maternity? Continuing to define women by themes of motherhood and maternity undermines the real progress that has been made in the ways that we think about women. The church doesn’t ask priests and monks to be "manly." Why then does it insist that women must be nurturing mothers?

All of these women—some mothers, some celibate, some single—have all worked to promote church and faith, even if the road isn’t always easy. Women have so much to offer to the church—let’s stop defining them by one characteristic.